


the Bad Idea

by BachandBefore



Category: Original Work
Genre: Children, Cigarettes, Depression, F/M, Motherhood, One Night Stands, Poverty, Relationship Problems, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 06:33:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10270397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BachandBefore/pseuds/BachandBefore
Summary: This is not a good part of town to live in.





	

JUST NOTHING  
By Hannah 

There are three people on the bus. Back-to-back searches of my handbag confirm that I have forgotten my headphones, so I sigh and surrender to their babble. One is a bone-thin girl, jeans hanging off her, hair like sticks. The product of too many appetite-suppressing cigarettes. Second is her opposite, a soft-bodied, flabby white female, wearing pajama bottoms with a wild print that still can't hide their stains. The third is a man with a scrappy beard, pointed at the chin and pasted along his jawline, a wide-brimmed cap pulled low on his head.   
I listen because I have no choice, not because their words are fascinating, which seems to be the common misconception among them. They jabber away, phrases like 'child support' 'food stamps' 'stepmother' common. They try to sound like they deserve to be upset, pretend to be intelligent. The word 'literally' is sprinkled in a lot. "Legit." Those are what they think are big words.  
This is the part of the world where everyone is divorced, everyone cheats on each other, everyone's broke, everyone has about eight kids so that there's plenty to neglect. I do not decry the poor. But these are the types of people who have surrendered to their low-brow, ambitious-less selves, who are losing at life and making not even an attempt to win. Despite their pennilessness, each one carefully scans some sort of smartphone, not really paying attention to and talking over one another, and there are cigarettes tucked behind their ears. Even the poorest will pay a lot just to get out of reality for a little while.  
I yank for the bell rope and the bus careens to a halt by the side of the road. I toss out a 'thanks' to the driver before stumbling out into an acid-cold night. Flood lamps are calling back and forth with neon signs and car headlights, waxy shades echoing through the wet sidewalk. Before me, a few hoots and hollers and some sort of thumping rap-like beat escape from a stairwell that leads underground. A gentlemen's club, they call it, though in my humble opinion the men who go to places like that are more closely related to apes than humans. Next to it, more stairs lead up, to where a painted red sign announces a cigar shop. Roll your own, it tells me.   
I look around. I share the sidewalk with a younger man. He's heavy with the same hopeless air as the rest of this sordid town, with the typical awful beard and cigarette and eyes lowered to his cell phone. "Excuse me," I call, taking out my wallet, and after a few more taps of the screen he glances up with disinterest. "Could you do me a favor?"  
"Uh."   
"Do you mind going into that place and buying me a cigar?"   
"Huh? Why can't you?"  
"Oh, the shop owner has a vendetta against me," I lie, shrugging, before I realize he probably doesn't know what that word means. "That is, a grudge." In truth I'm underage, but my new friend here doesn't need to know that. I hold out some bills. "Go in there and roll one as big as they'll let you, and you can keep the change."  
"Yeah, okay," Still holding the phone, he takes my money with his other hand and ambles up the stairs. I watch him shut the windowless door behind him, then lean against a lamppost to wait. The whole building has a look like a place that was nice so long ago that it barely remembers it now. Maybe the whole town is like that. Maybe people used to think, and dream, and work hard. Maybe they read books and learned instruments and had nice little chats about something other than where to get drugs. Maybe there are places in the world that are still like that.   
I think about the mothers I see around here, their falling-apart strollers and cheap jeans slung low to reveal lower-back tattoos, yelling at their crying babies as if they're fellow quote-unquote adults. When they became mothers, they didn't realize that it meant first their bodies and then their lives would no longer belong to them. They would belong to the child. The mothers couldn't get over that. It wouldn't help that the fathers had probably run off to be with more women, moving on. Because they can, I think. Why wouldn't they?  
I decide that I will never have children. I am too selfish. I accept and appreciate this selfishness. I have no one, so there's no need to quell my greed. I won't ever have anyone. There's a thing called 'love' that is put into storybooks to make them interesting. It involves chemistry, and compatibility. Lots of people in the real world fool themselves into thinking it might be real, and then they end up alone with bodies and lives that no longer belong to them, or a hope that dies like a burnt-out cigarette upon listening to their friend or brother brag. No, I will never have children. There's no one like me. No one I am willing to be close to.   
Unless...what if I do have a baby? If I appreciate my selfishness, is that not the first step to changing it? A lot of these people are ignorant to their greed, that's the real problem. But I know it. I could change. And the only way for there to ever be anyone like me is for me to create someone myself. My child, raised by me, would come to know my ways as what the world ought to be like. Saturated in myself, it would grow up just like me. She would read. He would think. She would learn instruments, and have ambitions, and probably feel the same hopelessness as I. But he would have me, the mother, to cry with. I would do everything I could to numb her pain, and make sure I was always there for him. I felt a rush of affection for this imaginary child, whomever he or she was.  
"Hey," the young man was behind me again, having come down the stairs, holding something out in his non-iphone-hand. "I got it."  
"Oh," I took the cigar from him. It was so stuffed that the brownish paper burst at the seams, and I grinned. "Beautiful. Thank you so much." I take him in. He's going back to his phone. "Did anyone ever tell you how nice you are? I bet you're always nice to people, even those you don't know."  
"Yeah, I try."  
"That's good. And you're cute."   
He looks up at that. "Uh, look, I don't know if you...I mean, I got a girlfriend."  
Whom would be so desperate-I start to think, but de-rail that train of thought. "That's nice. I bet she's pretty."  
"Eh, she's been driving me crazy. Like, the other day she goes to hang out with my brother, and then my brother texts me, "Carlie looks good in my bed.' So I was like trying to talk to her when she came home, but then she says she didn't do anything, of course."   
Right. These people are willing to complain to anyone who will listen. So I'll listen. "That's, um, lame. That sucks." To get through this I fish out my matchbook and light the end of the massive cigar, inhaling on the end. It's so strong that my eyes and nose try to escape from my skull. "Tell me more."  
"It's not the first time, either. I mean, I legit bust my ass for her, and..." He's rambling on and I start to walk, waiting for him to follow. He does so in lazy steps while I scan the street. There's got to be some lousy motel around here somewhere.


End file.
